Chapter 13 - The Shards of Memory
Jonathan did not let Lily anywhere near the foyer. He instructed Martha to keep the girl in the breakfast room, closed the heavy double doors, and carried the package into his private study, locking the deadbolt behind him.
His hands were steady, but his jaw was clenched tight enough to crack a tooth.
He took an antique silver letter opener from his desk and carefully slit the envelope. Inside was a single card of heavy cream cardstock. The message written in black calligraphic ink was brief, chilling, and unmistakably Victoria’s handwriting:
*“Some things can never be glued back together, Jonathan. Even what you love most is as fragile as glass.”*
A bitter taste flooded Jonathan’s mouth. Victoria was out on bail. Her wealthy, influential family—the Montgomerys of Chicago—had posted the staggering two-million-dollar bond within hours of her arraignment. Her high-priced attorneys were already filing motions to suppress the hidden camera footage, claiming it was an illegal invasion of privacy and doctored digital evidence.
With careful, deliberate cuts, Jonathan sliced through the packing tape on the box and pulled back the brown flaps.
Inside, nestled in mounds of dark purple tissue paper, was a crystal goblet.
It was an exact replica of the antique Baccarat crystal glass that Lily had accidentally dropped that fateful afternoon—the harmless childhood mistake that had unleashed Victoria’s terrifying rage and revealed her monstrous cruelty to the hidden lens above.
Except this glass was not whole.
It had been broken into dozens of jagged pieces, then meticulously reassembled using black epoxy resin, leaving ugly, dark scars crisscrossing the translucent crystal like a spiderweb. And nestled inside the bowl of the cracked glass was a tiny, severed lock of blonde ribbon—the exact satin ribbon Lily had worn in her hair the day she was banished to the cold storage room.
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Jonathan stepped back from the desk, his blood running cold.
She had someone watching them. Someone was close enough to observe the smallest details of Lily's life, slipping right through the perimeter of his multi-million-dollar fortress.
